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views:

486

answers:

2
Q: 

Custom NSWindow drawing

I want to draw an NSWindow that looks similar to this:

http://vibealicious.com/site/apps/notify/screenshots/mainUIFull.png

In that it has a typical NSWindow appearance with the bottom bar and such, but instead of a title bar at the top, I want to draw a little arrow.

Is there a simple way to do this? Do I have to draw the entire window by hand (bottom bar and all) ? Or can I slightly modify the existing NSWindow layout to just draw that arrow at the top? Thanks

+1  A: 

You could possibly fake the title bar by using a second child window that overlays the top section of the window and draws just the arrow. Otherwise, you'd need to draw the whole thing yourself.

Rob Keniger  2010-01-02 00:57:51
That's pretty much what I had in mind. Is there a way to get the frame of the title bar only (origin and size) so that I can resize and position my child window to cover it?
macatomy  2010-01-02 01:04:34
You can use the `+contentRectForFrameRect:styleMask:` class method of `NSWindow` to get the content rect for the window. You can then easily compare this with the window's frame to get the size of the title bar.
Rob Keniger  2010-01-02 05:08:12
This is what I ended up doing, thanks :)
macatomy  2010-01-07 04:07:27
A: 

Not sure what you mean by a simple way to do it, but it's not very hard to make your own window subclass and draw the window controls yourself. A child window would be a bit of overkill for this situation.

Have a look at the Round Transparent Window sample project.

NSResponder  2010-01-02 02:53:07
The only problem with drawing everything yourself is that if the window style changes (e.g. in a new OS release) then your window will look out of place. Of course, that applies to the arrow overlay also.
Rob Keniger  2010-01-02 05:01:47
This is true, and it's a good reason to carefully consider whether a custom window is appropriate for your situation.
NSResponder  2010-01-02 05:31:55

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